MH370 plunged rapidly, wing flaps not out

MISS­ING Malaysian Air­lines flight MH370 ap­peared to be out of con­trol when it plunged into the ocean, with the wing flaps not pre­pared for land­ing, a new re­port in Aus­tralia said yes­ter­day.

The re­port by the Aus­tralian Trans­port Safety Bureau found the plane’s fi­nal satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions were “con­sis­tent with the air­craft be­ing in a high and in­creas­ing rate of de­scent” when it van­ished.

Anal­y­sis of the right out­board flap, found off Tan­za­nia, showed it was “most likely in the re­tracted po­si­tion at the time it sep­a­rated from the wing”, sug­gest­ing the plane was not con­fig­ured for land­ing be­fore it smashed into the ocean.

“This re­port con­tains im­por­tant new in­for­ma­tion on what we be­lieve hap­pened at the end of MH370’s flight,” Aus­tralia’s Trans­port Minister Dar­ren Ch­ester said at the start of a three-day meet­ing in Can­berra where ex­perts will plan the fi­nal stages of the search.

De­spite a mas­sive un­der­wa­ter hunt far off West­ern Aus­tralia’s coast, no trace of the main wreck­age has been found.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed that three pieces of de­bris re­cov­ered along west­ern In­dian Ocean shore­lines came from MH370. There are cur­rently more than 20 items of de­bris still be­ing in­ves­ti­gated which were found on the coasts of Africa, Mada­gas­car, Mau­ri­tius, Re­union and Ro­drigues.

More than 110,000 square kilo­me­tres of a 120,000 sq km search arc have been scoured so far and the op­er­a­tion is due to wrap up in